Happy Birthday On the House

This Sunday marks the first birthday for On the House and for Stuff Blogs.

It's a bit of milestone, really. I wasn't sure what to expect when On the House dipped its toes into the often chilly and always turbulent seas of the blogosphere as the first political blog by a mainstream news outlet.

The first post was "A Hard Day's Night'', which appeared at 1.57pm on June 22 last year. It was a fairly bumbling account of a day in the House, which focused mostly on National MP Gerry Brownlee's doodling. The first response was from 'Don', who wrote: "Lots of nice respectful thoughts -just like Question Time''. I think he was being sarcastic.

That first post taught me bloggers didn't mince words.  "This blog is a compendium of trite pap,'' wrote Charles Leighton on that first post. Jordan Carter was kinder, writing "Great to see a mainline journalist blogging. Keep up the good work.''

The criticism, comment, and occasional praise has continued ever since. I've been called an idiot, a "Helen Clark lover'', a rabid Right-winger, a climate change denier, "jaundiced'', irreverent, and superficial. One post even took issue with the colour of my hair.   

By and large, though, I've been enormously impressed - even taken aback - by the sheer volume of interest, argument, analysis, and critical opinion that has flowed in the threads of this blog. Much of it has even been intelligent.

There has also been some pretty vociferous debate amongst those who have posted, and I've got to know site regulars from both the Left (Jum, AK, Joy Farrell) and the Right (Eddie, Alan Wilkinson, Sheelagh, Southern Man) as well as less familiar names that have come and gone - such as the Prime Minister's own press secretary Julie Clausen, who posted once on a piece I wrote about Clark's views on the media.  

From relatively humble beginnings, On the House now averages more than 10,000 page impressions a week (and no, they're not all me) and gets on average 40 responses per post. The most popular post was The Colby Budget, with 188 responses. The least popular? A post from Malaysia when I was on the road with the Prime Minister, which attracted just three replies.

Since On the House started both the New Zealand Herald  and the Dominion Post have started their own political blogs, and other mainstream news outlets are also contemplating blogs as the election campaign nears. Labour has started The Standard.  Stuff itself now has a total of 30 blogs in its stable.  

As it's election year I can only imagine that the plethora of blogs on politics will increase and I expect their influence will grow as well. I hope On the House can continue to play a role in providing a different perspective to that which appears in the pages of Fairfax's newspapers.

My thanks to all the contributors who have made On the House one of Stuff's most-read blogs, and to the veterans of the blogosphere like David Farrar and Russell Brown who have been kind enough to link to this site and send some of their readers this way.

Happy Birthday On the House!